


don't pray to gods after dark

by canondeath (bluelions)



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, The InBetween - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 01:14:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29876865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluelions/pseuds/canondeath
Summary: Sensations snake their way through every pore in his body. They feel like birth and death and hope and the beautiful, daunting realization that there are stars dying before your eyes.Sapnap finds himself in the Inbetween where he meets another Karl Jacobs.
Relationships: Karl Jacobs/Sapnap
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	don't pray to gods after dark

**Author's Note:**

> the march 4 tftsmp stream really had me thinking....  
> also more karl with wings!

Karl has always thought Sapnap looked good in red; blood smattered over his knuckles, warm wool keeping him warm, a blush rising to meet Karl’s lips. But not like this. He gazes at him against a backdrop of obsidian and blue-green particles, and Karl stares back, wide-eyed, at the blazing picture Sapnap paints.

_ Why are you here?  _ It’s lodged in Karl’s throat, taut like Sapnap’s clenched fists.

“Karl, why can’t you tell me? Don’t you think we have the right to know? You disappear for fuck’s sake! Do you know what it’s like not knowing when you come home? If at all?”

He shuts his eyes against the barrage of questions because god, he does know, he knows more than Sapnap could ever imagine.

Sapnap’s voice breaks. “Do you know what it’s like being looked in the eye by your fiance,” he trembles, crescendos, “and seeing absolutely nothing? You are  _ empty _ .”

“You don’t understand,” Karl cries softly. He opens his eyes to Sapnap’s face twisted in agony. In any other circumstance he could brush it away, cradle his face against his chest until he settled down. Karl has only stoked the flame.

It takes three wide steps for Sapnap to grab Karl by the shoulders. His lips tremble with the effort to not snap him in two, slowly turning into a snarl punctuated by canines.  _ Bite me if it’ll make you feel better. _

“I want to understand! I want to know!”

“Sapnap, I can’t tell you! Please, trust me,” he begs, pleads, prays to a forsaken god trapped somewhere deep in humanity’s clutches.

Sapnap shakes him once. Karl’s wings flutter to keep them balanced, and he watches his blue, blue eyes widen in either fascination or terror. He’s imagined so many times the gentle touch Sapnap would grace him with. The curious and wondered caress he’s imagined so many times disintegrates beneath Sapnap’s fingers.

“Karl, I love you.” A statement, a last resort, a final kick of the heart.

“I don’t love you any less.” It’s not what Karl wants to say nor is it what Sapnap wants to hear.

He begins to tug, to pull him away from the portal. Panic shoots up Karl’s spine, and his instinct takes over, grinding his bare feet into the cave floor, arms wildly shoving at Sapnap’s chest. He knocks his palm into his jaw and cries, “Sapnap, you can’t do this! I have to go!”

No response, just vermillion. Sapnap is stronger than him by leagues, but an entire dimension beckons infinitely more. They struggle futilely. It’s an unfortunate dance between two lovers.

Destiny strikes first. An arm comes loose, a foot slips forward, and all of a sudden they’re stumbling and careening for the portal. Karl slams into the frame sideways with a pained hiss. He slides to the floor. Sapnap isn’t so lucky, and Karl watches in slow-motion as his outstretched hands are swallowed by the portal, then his head, and the rest of his body follows.

“Sapnap!” Karl screams, but the portal dims and shatters. He sits alone in the dark.

-

Sapnap feels like he’s been run through on a stake multiple times and baked out in the sun. He’s misplaced his legs and his hands and his head. Oh, his head, both pounding and deathly silent at once. Everything tells him he’s not supposed to be here, and everything reassures he’s exactly where he needs to be.

Karl Jacobs. His wings. The portal.  _ Where is here? _

White. It’s all he sees when he opens his eyes, he thinks he’s gone blind. Sapnap raises a hand against the light and slowly sits up. From between his fingers he gathers he’s in a small, high-ceilinged room. It’s empty besides a wither rose sitting eerily at the end. That’s what he thinks before a shiver races across his skin, and he whips around–

“Karl?” he croaks.

“Yes?” he responds much too calmly for Sapnap’s liking. “What are you doing here? Who are you?”

Karl looks largely the same; white attire, wings folded to his back, a shiny golden pocket watch ticking at his hip. Somehow Sapnap knows this isn't Karl from back home.

“Where am I?” Sapnap asks instead. He watches Karl glance around as if someone would be watching.

“I don’t think I can tell you that,” Karl says. He offers his hand and pulls him to his feet. “We should talk.”

Karl leads him out of the room into an equally white corridor. In fact, everything is devoid of color. Through the windows the sky greedily melts with the entire spectrum. They end up in a little courtyard with a small patch of grass and a flowering tree, and Karl urges him to take a seat on the bench and explain.

He spills everything from Karl’s first absences to his secrecy and up to the current situation. As he speaks, the Karl beside him listens with such rapt attention, it feels clinical. Sapnap wants to scream with all the boiling rage lapping at his insides: this is you, you are doing this to us, I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m trying–

“I can’t tell you much,” Karl confesses, “both for confidentiality reasons and for… Well, I just don’t know. I can get you home, but you’ll end up forgetting all of this.”

Sapnap looks up. “Is that… Is that why you don’t remember sometimes?

Karl stiffens. “Yes. He will forget more and more each time he returns here.’

He digs his palms into his eyes. All of his tears had dried up a while ago. Now it just hurts. Sapnap hangs his head and mutters, “You’re not really him, huh?”

“Mm, I am, and I’m also not. I don’t know what your Karl has done or seen, and I don’t know what memories he’s made or forgotten.”

“Great.” Sapnap heaves a huge exhale and reclines in his seat, tilting his head upwards. The clouds float lazily in their watercolor pond. He wants to climb in and drift alongside them like a lilypad, maybe dip beneath the surface and extinguish his body. Sapnap feels Karl staring.

“You know, you do remind me of someone I think I know,” Karl murmurs. “I can’t quite remember.”

Sapnap’s chest aches. He wants to hold Karl and go home. He’s tired of missing him when he’s right in front of him.

Karl’s face softens, and he says, “We can… try something if you’d like?”

“What do you mean?” Sapnap mumbles, casting him a suspicious glance. His cheeks pinken the same way beneath his gaze.

“Well, I mean, we don’t have to,” Karl stutters, “but I could ease your worries a bit.”

“Won’t I just forget?”

“You won’t forget.” It’s the one thing he’s sounded so completely sure of up to this point. A shadow falls over Sapnap as Karl stands before him. His hair even falls the same way. “Can I touch you?”

Sapnap nods. The first stroke falls across his cheekbone like sunlight. It travels along the curve of his jaw until two hands now cup his face. His eyes flutter shut to the familiar rub Karl’s thumbs give. Sapnap doesn’t flinch once.

“Alright, hold still now.”

“Okay.”

Karl’s lips press to the center of his forehead. It feels like any other kiss Karl has given him; whole, warm, red. Then a force rushes through Sapnap’s body, a chilling gale sweeping through his soul, touching every inch of his nerves. He twitches violently, and his hands fly for Karl’s arms. He holds him through it.

His mind plays fragments of memories and images of strange places. Sensations snake their way through every pore in his body. They feel like birth and death and hope and the beautiful, daunting realization that there are stars dying before your eyes.

Faces flicker in and out, unrecognizable for a moment before turning into a friend, an enemy, a mentor. Sometimes he is alone. Sometimes he isn’t even sure of the body he is seeing through. Sometimes he relives a day he thought he had forgotten about.

The one recognizable constant is Karl. He is always there, and he tethers him here in this white castle while Sapnap lives an infinite amount of lives and experiences joy and love and peace for the first time, over and over.

And this is not the Karl Jacobs he’s fought for, sought sunset after sunset for, tore pieces of his own fabrication and patched new for. But Sapnap can cry for the one before him because somewhere in another dingy cave on their knees is another Sapnap waiting for their own angel to come home.

“I have seen and felt what Karl has loved in every thread of this universe,” he whispers against his skin, velvet soft, “so don’t be fooled. He is no stranger to finding you time and time again.”

Sapnap leans into the hand wiping his tears away.

“He does everything he can to keep you for as long as the gods allow him.”

**Author's Note:**

> the last time i wrote a piece i was this satisfied with was back in september, so this one means a lot to me! everything just flowed :)
> 
> there's a lot of stuff you could probably speculate about, but ambiguity was the intention! i like to think karl and sapnap are just reiterations of soulmates written in every page of the universe :')
> 
> thanks for reading this far! comments and kudos are always appreciated :)
> 
> you can find me on twitter [@ga1eforce](https://twitter.com/ga1eforce)


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